Class and Ethnic Barriers to Feminist Perspectives in Toronto’s Jewish Labour Movement, 1919–1939

Abstract

The history of Toronto's Jewish labour movement provides a critical context for examining the relationship between feminist and socialist currents in Canada's past. It also illuminates the relationship between these currents and ethnic identity within a key section of the working class. In the 1920s and 1930s, Toronto's Jewish labour movement was not only militant but also had a strong radical cast: the Jewish unions were led primarily by socialists and contained a significant socialist component within their rank and file as well. Furthermore, as in the United States, the Jewish labour movement was concentrated in the garment industry an industry with a highly unusual gender composition of labour. During most of the period under consideration, women constituted over half of Toronto's garment workers. A significant number of the Jewish women were active not only as trade-union militants but also as socialists. An examination of the Jewish labour movement in the interwar period thus provides an opportunity to study the historical interaction between class and gender in the context of both trade-union and socialist politics. 1